The Email Wars

Really has Loren McDonald reached into the bag of my favorite Bill McCloskey and gone “Network” on us? I love to see the passion and fever that burns in him about these issues, as I would wager all of the email marketers of a certain caliber and ESPs with Agency Services feel this way about the “basics”. 

But as basic as many of these seem to those of us that live in this world day in and day out, they can be a challenge to internal teams that don’t have the resources to handle them. So let’s take it as this, a challenge. I join Loren in challenging you to truly make your email marketing systems, steps and campaigns better. We know you can do it and hell we are sharing more of our collective ideas, tips and knowledge each and everyday. It is here for you, grab it, digest it and reguratate it if need be. 

Just get it done before Loren and Bill come to steal my baseball bat and put the hurt on you.

Read the hit list/challenge >>

This is great news and also amazing in some ways. 35% vs 25% of companies are using email versus direct mail in this recent study. Direct mail has really dropped significantly. Amazing. What they don’t show, which I would like to see, is how when DM and EM are used together what the success rates are, the lift, and how many companies are using both in tandem.

From Adweek: E-mail is now the most popular form of direct response marketing, per a new survey of large U.S. corporations conducted by Direct Partners, New York. E-mail is used primarily by 35 percent of companies compared to 25 percent that use traditional direct mail and 21 percent that use packages, statement-stuffers or free-standing inserts. The findings echo a study from last fall from MarketingSherpa, where participants reported that “house e-mail marketing” delivered the best return-on-investment in terms of direct response.

Read the Article/Study

Email Preferred Communicator by Consumers For Business Dealing
According to the 2008 study of consumer attitudes towards email and online interaction with businesses, completed in May 2008 by research firm Ipsos for Habeas, Inc., 67% of consumers prefer email as a primary method of communications in their personal and business capacities, and 65% will continue to prefer email in the future despite the rise of online threats and the emergence of other communication channels and Web 2.0 applications.

http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1720

Look if animated GIFs have been around so long why don’t we see them used more in email? I have been captivated recently by some retailers using them in their email creative. When my inbox starts moving, it grabs my attention and fast. Movement in unexpected places can be a real pull into the offer, action and drive my attention to click in for more.

Motion shows us that there is MORE past the email itself. It gives us that TV in email action that people are accustom to seeing in everyday life. 
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Eighty five percent of companies failed to personalize the first e-mail message sent to new subscribers, Return Path discovered with its new Return Path Subscriber Experiences study. This lack of customization, combined with other missed opportunities, leaves marketers unable to leverage the true power of email marketing.

Return Path, the leading e-mail performance management company, conducted the study by subscribing and studying the e-mail programs of 61 companies from the retail, consumer goods, travel, and media/entertainment industries.

The problem is not lack of data. Marketers are collecting information at sign-up that could be used to personalize their initial and subsequent e-mails. In fact, seventy percent of the companies studied collected additional information beyond a subscribers’ e-mail at sign up. Yet, 75% of the companies that collected that additional information did not use it to personalize their e-mails.

http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2008/06/research-study-creating-great.php

Return Path has recorded a webcast with Bonnie Malone Fry reviewing the study findings. Download that webcast here: http://www.returnpath.net/landing/subscribers. Downloading the webcast will also trigger an email message with a link to the study.